Secret Key Generation from Correlated Sources and Secure Link

TL;DR

This paper derives the optimal secret key rate when generating keys from correlated sources and a secure channel, demonstrating that joint schemes outperform separation-based schemes by more efficiently utilizing the secure channel.

Contribution

It introduces the optimal secret key generation scheme combining correlated sources and secure channels, showing joint schemes outperform separation-based methods.

Findings

Optimal secret key rate derived

Joint scheme outperforms separation-based scheme

Each secure channel bit yields more than one secret key bit

Abstract

In this paper, we study the problem of secret key generation from both correlated sources and a secure channel. We obtain the optimal secret key rate in this problem and show that the optimal scheme is to conduct secret key generation and key distribution jointly, where every bit in the secret channel will yield more than one bit of secret key rate. This joint scheme is better than the separation-based scheme, where the secure channel is used for key distribution, and as a result, every bit in the secure channel can only provide one bit of secret key rate.